On the other is a player with an evil character who presumably has an IC reason to do such a thing and has a similar desire for success.
Should the evil character refrain from doing what he would normally do based on OOC information?
This is just it. There was no evil character planned out. There was no IC motive behind any of it, from my perspective. After the event, Kanorie said something along the lines of "So who wants there to be a criminal for us to blame" in Gossip chat.
(17:03:16) [Channel] [1: gossip] Kanorie: Do we want a character to get caught and judged?
To be fair, this can technically come across as a person OOCly asking if there is interest. Kanorie might not have meant it as it sounded. Essentially a sort of, "should I bother to make up the alt that presumably did this." But on the other hand, it also shows that there probably wasn't enough planning for something as wide-scale and destructive as this, and blowing up a festival, leaving no leads, no further plot to follow, and no villain to chase turns what might have been intended as a livening up party into something rather trollish.
I friggin' love intense, explosive, violent role plays. Love em. I think the dark and the ugly brings out some fascinating character aspects. I love spontaneous things that happen! I love thinking on the fly! And I'm not even a person that really prefers low key meeting role plays where lots of people sit around and chatter. That's just me. However.
Is it ever, ever worth it to essentially destroy someone's careful planning and hours of effort without even ATTEMPTING to address them first about it? Most people are willing to co-plan with others, especially with such large-scale role plays, when addressed upon the topic. The fact of the matter is, the main organizers were not addressed, at all. The explosions went off just as the festival was beginning, thus completely null and voiding every single thing that any of them had spent hours planning. Heck, even timing this a little differently, giving it more hours to circulate, a day maybe to blossom, and THEN causing the ruckus, would have been alright. And the attack probably would have even had more impact too!
As I said, there's nothing wrong with violent role play. But repeatedly demeaning people who like more low key events, and effectively brutalizing their entire large-scale planning with zero warning whatsoever, is something to be avoided. Yliakum is to be shared. And while running plots with dastardly villains and intrigue is fantastic, and disrupting certain events (with warning) can make things exceedingly colorful, sometimes people have to step back when the event is as large-scale as this, and think a little about other people. Am I saying ask every time you run around picking pockets or get into a fight? Heck no. Do you need server wide permission to run role plays around your supah evul cthulu necromancer thing from another plane? No, though you might get funny looks. However, asking to simply address a party, especially when it's a large scale planned event with GMs and players collaborating together to make something, before blowing it all sky high, is not asking a lot. That is not whiny. That is called being courteous.
